


no one will scar me like you do

by junes_discotheque



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: And violence, Depression, Dubious Consent, F/M, Grief/Mourning, self-harm through sex, working through trauma via sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:15:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23796742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junes_discotheque/pseuds/junes_discotheque
Summary: The Doctor is dealing with the aftermath of her imprisonment and the revelation of the Timeless Child. Not *well*, but she's dealing with it. Then the Master shows up, and it's just one too many things.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49





	no one will scar me like you do

She thought, at least, she would feel _something_.

* *

When the Doctor landed on this planet, she’d had little thought besides having a moment to _breathe._ The resort is lovely, if generic, and the mountains outside her suite window are beautiful, but she’s seen all kinds of beautiful mountains and these don’t rank in the top fifty. She thinks she might have been better off staying in her TARDIS, but -

Her TARDIS sits in the corner of the suite’s living space, humming nervously in the back of her mind. Concerned. She tried to shut it out.

It didn’t work.

She’d been so content to find the TARDIS again, after breaking out of the Judoon prison. And it had been _her_ breakout. Jack had been there, sure, her bright, strong savior, but when their escape had gone to hell, _she_ had been the one to get them out. She’d almost resented it, their little adventure - it’d taken away from some _quality_ time alone with her own brains - but the Doctor knows that any longer in there and there’s no telling what Jack would’ve broken out.

The Doctor is, then, grateful. She just doesn’t have to be _happy_ about it.

But her TARDIS started projecting concern at her the second she found her again and it’s unbearable. So she’d come down here, to the bar, and drank three ginger daiquiris, and then _he_ showed up. A burn on his face and pain in his eyes and a snarl on his lips, and she’d just sort of -

Blinked.

So he had survived, after all. She wasn’t surprised. Death, for the Master, is never permanent. (For her, either - moreso, even. Not that the Doctor particularly wants to think about that. Now, or ever.)

“ _Doctor_ ,” he’d growled, grinning viciously. All teeth. She’d tilted her head a little, trying to study his twisted features, but the drink made her brains swim and she nearly lost her balance right off the bar stool. “What a mess you are,” the Master had laughed, noticing her empty glasses.

“You’re one to talk,” she’d muttered past her heavy tongue. She’d slid off the stool with all the grace she could muster - which wasn’t much - and stumbled away.

Or tried to, at least. He’d grabbed her arm before she could make it more than a couple of steps and pulled her in close to him. His beard had rubbed against the smooth skin of her cheek, and she’d felt his hot breath on her bare neck. Intimate. Through the haze of her intoxication and her grief, she’d felt a phantom stirring in her gut at the closeness. Sense memories, one stacked on top of the other: Saxon on the Valiant and then, later, in the Naismith house; Missy in the Vault and on the Mondasian ship; and further back even: San Francisco. The cheetah planet. Jodrell Bank, _before,_ and then later with regeneration energy still thrumming through brand new veins. In empty offices and cupboards at UNIT, more times than she can count. In their room at the Academy (and classrooms, and corridors, and outside below the burning suns). 

But never in these bodies. Never as _them._

Before he grabbed her, she hadn’t wanted to. Still didn’t, really. But his hand was in her hair and his teeth pressed against her throat and she’d wanted to give the bar a show even less, and so.

* *

Which brings them here, to a cramped, dusty utility closet barely half a dozen steps out of the crowd. The Doctor’s fingers are laced through the wire shelving, between jugs of floor cleaner, and her eyes are fixed on a dirty mop leaking gray water onto the concrete. Her trousers and pants are pooled at her ankles, her legs spread as wide as the confinement will allow, and the Master grips the back of her neck in one hand and her bare hip in the other as he thrusts into her. 

His movements are even, steady, a sharp snap at the end of each one that she supposes is meant to hurt, and his breathing is harsh and ragged. He keeps muttering filth, calling her every name he can think of, and it all blurs into a vague stream of syllables.

It’s not the first time he bent her (him, really) over and had his way. She remembers how many bodies of hers were wholly receptive to the treatment; enthusiastic, even. She thinks there might have been a time when she would be, too. The Doctor can almost imagine it: He would _have her_ in this new way, both of them delighting in discovering how her upgraded features work. How she might like to be touched. But the time for that is long past, and longer still since she wanted to be touched by anyone, in any way. She thought she’d feel something - not pleasure, she knew before he dragged her in here that _pleasure_ wasn’t possible, but pain and hatred are almost the same thing, so close and so inherently connected to the Master that she often can’t tell the difference - but the Doctor is quickly realizing she was wrong. There’s nothing for her to feel, anymore. She is just -

Nothing.

So she closes her eyes, and doesn’t exist, and when he finally finishes inside her and moves to touch her, as well, she pulls away. 

“Too good for that?” the Master snarls at her. “You’ll let me fuck you but, oh, letting me make you _come_ is a step too far.”

She pulls up her trousers over the streak of wet dripping down her thigh and stares at him. Her hair is a mess, she knows - she can tell from the wisps around her eyes. “What?”

“I don’t need your pity, Doctor.”

Again - she doesn’t understand. She blinks at him, confused. “I’m not offering it,” she says, buttoning her trousers and pushing her hair out of her face. “Don’t think I have that in me, anymore.”

She turns to leave. In an instant, he has her thrown against the wall, hand pressing hard against her sternum, fingers splayed wide over her double heartbeat. “See?” he says, and he hits the wall next to her head. She doesn’t flinch. “It changed you. _Knowing._ ”

 _Of course it did,_ she wants to say. _Of course, knowing what was done to me - how could it not?_ But the words don’t come, and she just watches him, as he sucks in a breath and shoves his hand down her trousers.

“You’re so _high_ now. So far _above._ Can’t bear to have me _touch_ you,” he’s rambling now. “Oh, you thought you were just a less-than-mediocre Time Lord, needing me to keep.you from failing out, running off and taking the name of a filthy _renegade_. Didn’t mind rolling around in the _mud_ then. Oh, but now.” He laughs.His fingers push insistently at her, rubbing hard on the spot she knows should make her see stars and occasionally slipping inside where she’s still wet from his release. “ _Now,_ you’re a _God_.” 

That -

Oh. That _hurts_. Pain so intense she almost screams, and for the first time since -

Since Gallifrey -

She _does_ something.

The Doctor is barely aware of her arm flying, or her fist connecting with the Master’s jaw; one second, his lips are on her throat and the next, he’s splayed on the ground. His fingers are shiny and a slight color is starting to bloom on his face.

“I’m not,” she says. “And this - what you discovered - it has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with _them,_ an entire planet who didn’t even -” She takes a breath.

 _Damn_ him. Damn him for surviving, for tracking her down, for putting this on her all over again. Damn him for trying to force his feelings about _her past_ on her, before she can even begin to sort out her own. Damn him for the things he said on Gallifrey, putting yet another genocide on her conscience.

Damn _everything._

“I’m leaving,” she says. “Don’t follow.”

* *

She has the suite for another three nights, but doesn’t use it. The TARDIS chimes distress in her head the second she gets close, though she quiets to a hum when the Doctor runs her hand over the door.

“Just you and me,” she sighs. “Do you think -”

She’s been reluctant to return to Sheffield. She’s changed so much, and she couldn’t bear to face her friends’ judgment. But being alone isn’t good for her; it never has been.

The TARDIS seems to agree, because she gives a little relieved whir, and when the Doctor checks the screen, the coordinates are already set.

She smiles. It feels real.

“Alright, then,” she says.


End file.
